


Wait, We're All Doctors

by SaintClaire



Category: The Good Doctor (TV 2017)
Genre: Cute, F/M, Morgan cares, Morgan's having fun, Shaun makes a brief cameo, Sickfic, aggressively caring about you, just concerned! doctors being concerned, very little angst of any kind, where literally everybody is the doctor, you don't get a choice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-18 18:09:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21281036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintClaire/pseuds/SaintClaire
Summary: “Stop messing with your IV.”Claire blinked at him, her face bleary.  “It’s pulling,” she whispered, wincing as her voice came out hoarsely.When Claire goes down with the flu, she has an entire hospital's worth team of overly concerned doctors ready to aggressively care for her until she gets better.  How could you not?
Relationships: Claire Browne/Neil Melendez
Comments: 8
Kudos: 146





	Wait, We're All Doctors

**Author's Note:**

> I feel so sorry for everybody subscribed to me as an author, I know I bounce between fandoms like I'm on a sodding pogo stick. But this one is for the Melendaire among you!! I have treasured all of your comments and love, and I am BACK. I finished my final placement yesterday!!! I am officially done with uni in a weeks time, and fresh out of a hospital, I decided to write a sick fic. The fact I've spent all day in bed watching catch up of the Good Doctor notwithstanding.

“Stop messing with your IV.”

Claire blinked at him, her face bleary. “It’s pulling,” she whispered, wincing as her voice came out hoarsely. 

He sat down beside her and stretched out her arm, balancing her hand on top of his thigh as he gently readjusted the tape. He adjusted it so it was no longer pulling her skin taunt quite as harshly, and smoothed the tape back down carefully. 

“Look at you,” Claire whispered again, her voice sounding slightly stronger this time. “Isn’t this scut work? You’re slumming it.” He mock-frowned at her, barely lasting a moment before he smiled, gently rubbing his thumbs over the back of her hand, trying to warm up her freezing fingers. 

“VIP case,” he murmured back, matching her level. “took priority over the round meeting”.

Claire tried to say something back, but her voice caught and she began to cough, her hands grabbing the rail of the bed as she heaved herself over the edge of the bed, choking up bile. 

He slid the dish under her with ease, his other arm slipping under her chest to support her as she gagged, not letting go until the last of her coughing back and she slumped against his arm, exhausted. 

“Go back to sleep” he said quietly, picking the hair-tie off the pillow and gently pulling her hair back. It was a shoddy job, and he made a face at the curls, smoothing a hand over her head. “I have to make the ward round, but I’ll be back afterwards. I can get someone to come a sit with you, if you like. Park, maybe. Or would you like me to get Shaun?”

She didn’t answer him, her face buried in the blanket twisted up in her hands, but she shook her head, just a little. 

“Okay” he said softly. He stood reluctantly, dragging an eye over the monitor and flicking the IV bag, checking again that the tape wasn’t pulling too tightly. 

Claire’s lips were pale, and the skin around her mouth was several shades lighter than it should have been. Her breathing was harsh and laboured, even though she was no longer coughing. He hesitated, and then adjusted the monitor quickly, adding his pager to the alert system should her vitals change for the worse. 

Claire made a small noise as he pulled his coat back on, without opening her eyes. He frowned, stepping forward again to take hold of one of her hands, still bunching the blanket in her fist. “Three hours,” he promised, rubbing small circles into the base of her thumb. “I’ll be back in three hours, tops."

Claire made another small sound, more acquiescing than the last, and he kissed her forehead lightly before he let go off her hand, and stepped out of the cubicle, making sure to leave the curtain facing the nurse’s desk open.

…

To the resident’s credit, they all dropped by to check in on Claire over the several days she was an inpatient. He doubted they made for particularly comforting bedside company, but he supposed the thought still counted.

Park bought flowers, Morgan gave her a humidifier with a note sticky-taped to the top declaring it was a loan, and Shaun left a copy of a journal article on a randomised control trial of amantadine on Claire’s bedside table while she was asleep.

Claire spent 10 minutes coughing over a bowl after laughing at the title of Shaun’s present. Shaun had asked what was funny, but Claire was too tried to explain, and Shaun was happy enough to read it aloud to her when she asked, claiming her eyes were too tired to read the small print. 

He’d stuck his head back in some time later to find Claire fast asleep, while Shaun read on, oblivious to that fact. 

When Shaun finally looked up half an hour later, having finished reading through the conclusion, at least he wasn’t offended by his deeply sleeping audience.

…

It took just over four days for Claire to be declared fit for discharge by respiratory, plus another two days for the approval of all 3 residents, Lim, half a dozen nurses, and he himself. 

The fact that Claire was technically not their patient didn’t seem to be a relevant factor in anyone’s mind. Despite the fact that her bed-card was clearly labelled ‘RESPIRATORY’, she was under the combined medical management of a group of paediatric and general surgery specialists, plus all-those-in-training; half an ear given to the respiratory doctors on the side, much to Claire’s amusement. 

“Did the pharmacist drop off the antibiotics?” he asked, plucking a woolly grey jumper out of Claire’s bag where she’d just put it and draping it back over her shoulders. 

“She did.” Claire answered, batting his hand away as he tried to pull her jumper more tightly around her frame. She leant into him, wrapping her arms around his waist and hugging him tightly. 

Melendez huffed, bending his head down to press his nose into the top of her head and squeezed her back, doing his best to make the embrace seem like an innocent hug and not a sneaky check to see how much more easily he could feel her ribs. 

Something poked him sharply in the sternum, and Claire’s head came up, grinning at him. 

“Stop trying to see if I’ve lost weight,” she said, teasing. “I’m clear. I’ve been cured! I’ve been checked out by everyone, including you, I just need to go home and get a good night’s sleep, maybe eat something that wasn’t made in mass produce and slopped on a tray.”

“I was not,” he lied smoothly, pulling back a little. Claire hummed, not sounding convinced, and he was saved from having to further defend himself against further accusations when Morgan strode in. 

She ignored him completely, pushing hard on one of Claire’s shoulders until she was unceremoniously dumped back in her chair. 

Claire squawked in indignation, and he stifled a laugh in his fist as Morgan unhooked her stethoscope from around her neck and plunged her hand down Claire’s shirt without saying a word. 

“Oh shush,” she said absent-mindedly as Claire screeched at the cold shock of the metal head. 

“Chest sounds are clear” she reported a few minutes later, bending Claire over so she could get to her back with all the autonomy of a puppeteer. 

Shaun appeared at the window, his nose nearly pressed to the glass as he observed, and he gave up trying to look like he found nothing with the situation. Claire glared at him from where she was hunched over her knees, Morgan still rummaging around inside her shirt. 

She was still a bit pale, had some shadows under eyes, and could definitely use a decent meal or three, but she looked so much better than the shivering mess she had been when the Uber had brought her into the ER nearly a week ago, testing positive for Influenza A within the hour. 

When he’d burst into the ER on receiving the page that Claire had presented, she’d been curled up on her side in the middle of the bed, coughing so hard that the bed had been rattling under her. 

He’d marched her bed to the x-ray department himself, not budging until he had pictures of her lungs. Yelling at Andrews had been involved, he was a little fuzzy in the details. 

Morgan finally released her, Claire glaring indignantly at Morgan’s back as Morgan turned to him, supremely unaffected. 

“I take it you’re driving her home?” He raised an eyebrow at her, amused, and Morgan rolled her eyes. “Well obviously you’re driving her home, I’m just asking,” she said. 

“I know I’m off the clock right now, so I’m technically not your attending and you’re technically not my resident-” he started, only to stop speaking when Morgan held up her hand, an unimpressed look on her face.

“She’s just a patient, and you’re just the boyfriend” she said, as Claire grumbled behind her, thoroughly ignored. “Fluids, bed, finish the antibiotics, you should know the drill. Get out of here.”

He shoulder-checked her out of the way, moving to give Claire a hand up from the chair as he slung her bag over his shoulder. 

“If I was your attending right now, you’d have been fired for this” he informed her primly, grinning as Morgan pointed imperiously at the door. 

“If you were my attending right now, you wouldn’t be coddling a standard case of the flu like a fussy chicken,” came the rude reply. “I’ll see you on Wednesday.”

Shaun waved at Claire from against the opposite wall of the corridor as they walked out, Melendez keeping a hand on the small of Claire’s back even though he could admit she hardly needed it. 

Claire chuckled to herself as Morgan’s voice floated down the hall. 

“And don’t forget to bring back my humidifier!”

He made Claire do the jacket up before they reached the front doors, running into Park on the way, who managed to say goodbye like a normal person, without insulting either of them.

All of the nurses and quite a few of the patients waved at Claire on the way out, and he did his best to look like the professional he was, instead of a concerned wreck who’d spent most of his spare time over the last week hovering at Claire’s beside.

The patients who recognised him waved politely, but there were more than a few smirks and snickers from the staff, who’d put up with his apparently-unsuppressed fretting for the last few days, having been booted off the case early on. 

“Hungry?” he asked, as he swung Claire’s bag into the back seat, opening the driver’s door and sliding behind the wheel.

She smiled at him, leaning forward and kissing him for a long moment. He let her happily, kissing back until Claire pulled away, covering her mouth with her hand as she tried to pretend like she wasn’t catching her breath, her shoulders shaking a little bit.

He took her hand and let her breathe it out, playing with her fingers as he let her get on with it, determined not to say anything.

“Starving,” she said, decisively, voice tight in the way of someone who is desperately trying not to cough. “Can we get fries?”

He started the car without releasing her hand, squeezing once before letting go so he could take the wheel. “Takeaway it is.”

…

The drive back to his house is quiet, Claire munching on fries with the first show of appetite he’s seen in days.

“Lim dropped by when you were at the handover” Claire said suddenly, surprising him. “She mentioned you’ve written yourself off call for the next 48 hours.”

“I wanted to be home,” he said simply. “Fry?”. She held two up to his mouth and he opened obediently, crunching it down. 

“I’m not even contagious” Claire said gleefully, and he couldn’t help it, he laughed. 

“You’re supposed to be resting.”

She side-eyed him as he pulled into traffic, sudden apprehension written over her face. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that doctors make the worst patients.”

“You’re supposed to be resting,” he repeated.

She smiled, and pushed up in her seat so her face was pushed up against his cheek, her hand sliding under the collar of his shirt. Suddenly the road in front of him was requiring a hell of a lot more concentration than it was a moment ago. “I was listening to my doctor, I am supposed to be in _bed_.”

He risked turning his head for a bare second, eyes still open and trained on the road to kiss her. 

“Doctor’s orders?” he tried, a smile pulling up one side of his mouth. “What I say goes?”

“Oh please, my doctor’s Reznick.”

His outraged gasp made Claire laugh so hard she fell back into her seat.

_Ouch. _

**Author's Note:**

> I am so very glad to be back writing, and I am (hopefully!) here to stay for awhile. You can chat to me here or on [Tumblr](https://radpeacharbiter.tumblr.com), I love to know what you think!


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